Return to The News Releases Google’s new Patents Reveal Ranking Algorithms existence of the sandbox.
Published on the 11/05/2007
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For some time now Search Rankings has been aware of a domain isolation technique applied by Google to new websites and commonly referred to as the sandbox. | To date most aspects of the Google Ranking Algorithm have been a little more than assumptions and speculations among webmasters and search engine optimisation (SEO) experts alike. However new ranking patents filed for by Google in April shed a little light on how the indexing works and on the existence of the sandbox.
What the new patents reveal is that Google assigns a score to web pages based on the following.
The age of the website
Older websites are awarded a higher score compared to new ones. This is inline with the existence of the Google sandbox.
Links, link changes, link text, and link growth
Link growth has more influence; a new website with a higher link growth rate will be ranked higher than an older website with a lower growth rate. A constant growth rate may be better than quick growth. At the same time Google looks at the quality of links and the neighborhood which the website sits within.
Where your website is hosted
Web sites hosted together with spam websites will loose their Google score. This is unfortunate for websites that are hosted on budget or cheaper hosts. Search Rankings offers premium grade business hosting to its clients.
Changes and updates to a web site or page
A website that updates its content often may receive a higher score. Google seems to favor landing pages to which new links are generated and which has content constantly updated. Search Rankings recommends that clients update their website often keeping it current and relevant to visitors.
Traffic and User behavior
Google will look at your traffic to determine a page score. A significant gain or reduction of traffic to a web page including consistently being selected out of a group of search results will affect the page score.
Although there are new significant changes to the Google algorithm it only strengthens their previous policy of ethical search engine optimisation (SEO). Spamming and artificial link generation techniques such as link buying have very little margin of error.
Search Rankings practices ethical search engine optimisation techniques focused on delivering long term gains and establishing solid SEO ground work. These techniques allow for regular gains rather than highs and lows each time Google updates its algorithm.
- Links are still the most important. Make sure links generated are of good quality and that you link to the right pages, quality over quantity.
- Content, web page and website structure still plays an important role and needs to be planned, original and relevant to your website and support your overall business objectives.
All factors should be considered when optimising a website and the basic search engine optimisation (SEO) ground rules still apply. |
